To use this book you should have the latest version of Vim installed, which is version 7.3 at the time of this writing. New versions of Vim are almost always backwards-compatible, so everything in this book should work fine with anything after 7.3 too.
Nothing in this book is specific to console Vim or GUI Vims like gVim or MacVim. You can use whichever you prefer.
You should be comfortable editing files in Vim. You should know basic Vim terminology like "buffer", "window", "normal mode", "insert mode" and "text object".
If you're not at that point yet you should go through the vimtutor program,
use Vim exclusively for a month or two, and come back when you've got Vim burned
into your fingers.
You'll also need to have some programming experience. If you've never programmed before check out Learn Python the Hard Way first and come back to this book when you're done.
If you already know what a ~/.vimrc file is and have one, go on to the next
chapter.
A ~/.vimrc file is a file you create that contains some Vimscript code. Vim
will automatically run the code inside this file every time you open Vim.
On Linux and Mac OS X this file is located in your home directory and named
.vimrc.
On Windows this file is located in your home folder and named _vimrc.
To easily find the location and name of the file on any operating system, run
:echo $MYVIMRC in Vim. The path will be displayed at the bottom of the
screen.
Create this file if it doesn't already exist.